Is phenomenology a method or a philosophy (of ?ontological? character)? This question is discussed here with a recent philosophical collection of articles about the phenomenology of sport at hand. However, one finds very few concrete phenomena in this volume, but much abstract talk about the authoritative philosophers of ontology and existentialism. This gives the ?phenomenological school? a somewhat sectarian character, which is not typical in recent contributions of phenomenology. This review essay broadens out from the current volume under consideration towards (...) a history of phenomenology and a differential phenomenology of phenomenology. It is not clear how much value the volume itself, however, has for the understanding of sport as well as for the understanding of phenomenology. Nevertheless, it documents how phenomenological scholastics approach sport, which may serve as a warning at a time when positivist reductionism seems to have also become mainstream in human and social sciences. (shrink)

This paper concerns both Aristotle's notion of right feelings and Husserl's account of intentional feelings and emotions as developed in their ethical writings and it discusses these approaches in relation to each other. It addresses the question of motivation and justification or evidence for moral feelings and actions. In particular, it focuses on the emotional states of Philia and love as well as the inherent relationship between affectivity and reason. The paper concludes with some reflections on the requirements for the (...) constitution of a moral self. (shrink)

This paper enquires into a paradigmatic change concerning the concept of motion: from a phenomenological conception of motion understood as a continuous and finite process of translation, to a physical conception of motion as rectilinear, uniform and continuous, that is, as an inertial state that if unhindered, can extend infinitely – the former held by Aristotle, the latter by Koyré, a shift that is evidenced by their contrasting treatment of Zeno’s paradoxes. I argue that both ontologies of motion can be (...) understood in phenomenological terms: Motion is accomplished by the real itself. However, while Aristotle’s continuous motion as actualization of the form of a given body involves its formal determination and constitution of sense, Koyré’s conceives of motion and rest as kinds of being and motion itself as exemplifcation of the mathematization of nature that Husserl described in the Crisis. Taken together, these changes presuppose a transformation of metaphysical and epistemic frameworks. (shrink)

This article inquires firstly into the descriptive and affective function of images as examples and exemplars in both Cassirer’s and Husserl’s conceptions of perception and aesthetics in order to disclose their respective relationship to reality, that is, mimesis. In view of the correlation between symbolic comportment and symbolic forms at Cassirer, it will secondly show that the ensuing hermeneutical circle can be overcome by taking recourse on Husserl’s genetic analyses on passive sense constitution. It will thus set the basis for (...) a “hermeneutics of expression” that should, thirdly, shed light on the possibility of establishing an aesthetical knowledge. For this purpose, it will disclose an excess of sensuous expression that is determined by a pre-categorial limit-concept within the process of sense-formation. This inquiry shows that, while images as examples are characterized by their ideal arbitrariness, aesthetic images as singular and categorially determined exemplars can be understood as the affective expression of reality. (shrink)

This paper deals with the problem of the origin of sense and meaning. For Husserl, the determination of the ideal identity of something new can only take place retroactively in the totality of the preceding series by stepping back towards the original foundation of sense. In this regard, J. Derrida questions the ideality of the same as presence and the possibility of retrieving any arché of sense in his writings Speech and Phenomena and Edmund Husserl’s Origin of Geometry. Phenomenology is (...) not oblivious to these difficulties, as results from a closer reading of the correlation between idealities and sensory experience: It will show that there are at least four interrelated gaps in the Husserlian phenomenology which testify the difficulty in grasping a retraceable arché of sense. First, the gap between the ideality of sense and its representation. Second, the gap between sensory and categorial intuitions, whereby both exceed one another. Third, the gap between the ideality of sense and the sense which exceeds our expectations. Fourth, the gap between the experience of the new that overcomes us and its apprehension by consciousness. Hence, there is a fundamental gap between the conceptual idealities and the essential indeterminacy of our phenomenological sensory experience, which is correlative to an excess of one in respect to the other. In this sense, Derrida’s concepts of « différance » and “invention” allow us to conceive of this self-givenness of sense as the expression of its constant self-renewal. This expression takes the form of a trace, which, neither present nor absent, suspends meaning and full presence, leaving the narrative “open” for the reinvention of sense. (shrink)

“De jure naturae multa fabulamur” — after 450 years, Luther's statement has lost none of its original validity. After a brief pseudo-renaissance following WWII, one now hears far less in legal theory about natural law, which appears finally to have fallen victim to what Weber early in the century characterized as “a progressive decomposition and relativization of all meta-legal axioms” — a destruction resulting partly “from legal rationalism itself,” and partly “from the skepticism which characterizes modern intellectual life generally.” Law (...) today, wrote Weber, “is all too tangibly (in the great majority of its determinations, and especially in many which are particularly important in terms of principle) revealed to be both the product and the technical medium of a compromise of interests,”. (shrink)

CSR has become an important element in the business strategy of a growing number of companies worldwide. A large number of initiatives have been developed that aim to support companies in developing, implementing, and communicating about CSR. The Global Compact (GC), initiated by the United Nations, stands out. Since its launch in 2000, it has grown to about 2900 companies and 3800 members in total. The GC combines several mechanisms to support CSR strategies: normative principles, networks for learning and co-operation, (...) and communication and transparency about CSR activities. However, up to now only a few empirical evaluations of the contribution of the GC to CSR strategies have been conducted that however have not differentiated between different types of companies (regarding type of industry or regarding the maturity of CSR). This paper aims to partly fill this knowledge gap by a case study examination of three frontrunner companies in the telecommunications industry. The results show that the GC is only one of the many initiatives that these companies employ in shaping, implementing, and reporting about their CSR strategies, and that its role is at most modest. There are two important reasons. One is that many of the CSR issues that these companies deal with are industry specific and are hence addressed in specific networks. The second reason is that the GC principles are perceived as minimum requirements that do not provide many incentives to the three case study companies to perform better. A differentiation of norms for GC members is expected to enhance the contribution of the GC to CSR strategy employment, not only for frontrunner companies but as well for other categories of companies. (shrink)

In den folgenden Überlegungen wird der Frage nachgegangen, welchen Status die Unterscheidung zwischen Sinnlichkeit und Begriff in der Philosophie Husserls hat und inwiefern sie für die Herausarbeitung eines ästhetischen Wissens fruchtbar gemacht werden kann. Husserl formuliert in den Ideen I das „Prinzip aller Prinzipien“ für die Philosophie, „daß jede originär gebende Anschauung eine Rechtsquelle der Erkenntnis sei, daß alles, was sich uns in der ‚Intuition’ originär (sozusagen in seiner leibhaften Wirklichkeit) darbietet, einfach hinzunehmen sei, als was es sich gibt, aber (...) auch nur in den Schranken, in denen es sich da gibt[...].“1 Eine Anschauung ist also die subjektive Erscheinungsweise eines Gegenstandes: Etwas erscheint mir „als“ etwas, d.h. das Selbstsein der Sache ist nicht ein ‚ansich’ Sein, sondern eine „subjektive[], situationsgebundene[] Gegebenheitsweise.“2 Es gibt eine Korrespondenz zwischen der Gegebenheitsweise – dem ‚Wie’ des Erscheinens – und dem Gegenstandsart bzw. dem Gegenstandssinn – dem ‚als Was’ der Gegenstand vermeint ist. Sinnliche und kategoriale Anschauungen konstituieren die Form der Gegenständlichkeit: die sinnliche aus den „Auffassungsstoffen“, die kategoriale aus den „Auffassungsformen“. Sie sind nicht getrennte Bereiche in der husserlschen Phänomenologie, sondern sind durch ein Fundierungsverhältnis3 aufeinander bezogen: Laut den Logischen Untersuchungen ist eine kategoriale Anschauung4 ein durch eine sinnliche Wahrnehmung fundierter intentionaler Akt;in der kategorialen Anschauung erfüllen sich die „kategorial geformten Bedeutungen“.5 Im Unterschied zur sinnlichen Anschauung ist die kategoriale Anschauung durch einen „Überschuss in der Bedeutung“ charakterisiert, denn „nur die in []einem ‚Begriff‘ vereinten Merkmalbedeutungen terminieren in der Wahrnehmung“.6 In seinen späteren Überlegungen erkennt Husserl aber, dass das Kategoriale auf das Nichtkategoriale, auf das Vorprädikative bzw. die passive Synthesis hinweist. Im Folgenden wird daher die These vertreten, dass diese Anerkennung einer passiven, vorkategorialen, ursprünglichen Sinnstiftung und die darauf aufbauende sich stets fortbildende Sinnbildung des identischen Gegenstandes im kontinuierlichen Wahrnehmungsverlauf dem Gegenstand einen sinnlichen Überschuss aufprägt, den die kategoriale Wahrnehmung nicht einzulösen vermag. Diesem Überschuss liegen spezifische Wissensformen zugrunde, die nicht mehr ganz im Sinne Husserl, sondern in Anknüpfung an Platons Politeia als eikasía (Vermutung: den Bildern, eikones, entsprechend) und pístis (Hinnahme, Überzeugung) bestimmt werden können. Im letzten Teil des Vortrages wird schließlich ein auf dem Boden der Lebenswelt aufbauendes Fundierungsverhältnis zwischen ästhetischem und wissenschaftlichem Wissen vorgeschlagen. (shrink)

The interweavement of philosophy and literature allows to gain a new sense from the own, lived experiences and to express them through narrations, as the paradigmatic works of Nietzsche, Deleuze and Borges show. They all deal with the inexorability of time and the fact of being at the mercy of the unwanted aspects of Being-in-the-world, the detailed reading of which allows us to assert that the event of the emergence of a new sense lies in the experience of the creative (...) power of the instant, wherein the difference is introduced as the first principle through a Copernican turn and where the eternity expresses itself. In fact, the instant in its repetition results from a strike of chance, an assumption which leads to a new understanding not only of time as a network of destinies, but of eternity as extensive, intensive or ecstatic eternity. Being involved in this experience means to undergo an existential experience of time which produces an irrevocable change of the self. (shrink)

Following a detailed study of the views of reid and wittgenstein on philosophy and language, I conclude that reid's position represents an extremely pivotal stage in the upgrading of the importance of language in philosophy which, Taken up and carried along by moore, Culminates in the later philosophy of wittgenstein and that the latter owes much to views on philosophy and language which have their origin in reid.

This paper investigates whether managerial rhetoric in the Management Discussion and Analysis section of 10-K filings can help gauge the level of managerial opportunism in a firm. We find that the use of trust-related words is connected to inefficient investment decisions and poor operating performance. Furthermore, firms making more frequent use of trust-related words are subject to less monitoring by institutional investors or analysts. Their accounting also relies more heavily on discretionary accruals. These results are consistent with the notion that (...) managerial rhetoric to advertise trustworthiness points towards agency problems plaguing the firm. (shrink)

Bodily movement has a deeper meaning than modern sport science might recognize. It can have religious undertones, and in modern societies, it is sometimes related to the building of national identity. In the study, two cases of bodily practice are compared. Norwegian ski has a relation to friluftsliv (outdoor activities) and is highly significant for modern Norwegian identity. Indian yoga is related to the traditional ayurveda medicine and to Hindu spirituality, and obtained an important place in the process of anti-colonial (...) nationalism. The aim is to demonstrate how Norwegian skiing and Indian yoga as national body and movement cultures in different ways, show a complex connection between ‘ancient roots’ and modern transformations of cultural identity. Gliding on skis, sitting, and breathing in yoga make up the basis on which people have built identities of their collective ‘we’. (shrink)

Suppose we can save either a larger group of persons or a distinct, smaller group from some harm. Many people think that, all else equal, we ought to save the greater number. This article defends this view (with qualifications). But unlike earlier theories, it does not rely on the idea that several people's interests or claims receive greater aggregate weight. The argument starts from the idea that due to their stakes, the affected people have claims to have a say in (...) the rescue decision. As rescuers, our primary duty is to respect these procedural claims, which we must do by doing what these people would decide, in a process where each is given an equal vote on the matter. So in cases where each votes in their own self-interest, respect for their equal right to decide, or their autonomy, will lead us to save the greater number. The argument is explained in detail, with special attention to the questions of how, exactly, it avoids aggregation, and of why majority rule is superior to lottery procedures. The view has further advantages. Especially, it explains the “partial” relevance of numbers in cases involving unequal harms, and it does so in a way that dissolves the appearance of paradox that besets theories of “partial aggregation.”. (shrink)

In her article “Die Irrealität des Kunstwerkes,” first published in 1938, Hedwig Conrad-Martius delves into the question of the artistic representation of the real reality of the world, which basically concerns the classical distinction between art and nature. It is in this context that Conrad-Martius rejects idealism and the concomitant assumption that an artwork imitates the “living reality” of Nature. She clearly distinguishes between the task of phenomenology and that of art: while phenomenology should surpass the sphere of mere sensuous (...) appearances and inquire into the “real reality” (wirkliche Wirklichkeit) of the world, phenomenological aesthetics should conversely deal with the expressive character of appearances and assume their inherent “irreality” (Irrealität), such that phenomenological ontology and aesthetics involve distinctive ontological realms that vary according to the subject-matter. However, while she clearly distances herself from Husserl’s phenomenology in her search for the consciousness-independent facticity of the world, she concurs with him in her eidetic enquiries and in the assertion of the creative potential of art, which lies in the creation of a new, even “irreal,” world. For this purpose, I will explore confluences and divergences between their respective conceptions. (shrink)

Twelve years after his famous Essay on Some Problems Concerning the Normal and the Pathological (1943), the philosopher Georges Canguilhem (1904–1995) published a book-length study on the history of a single biological concept. Within France, his Formation of the Reflex Concept in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1955) contributed significantly to defining the “French style” of writing on the history of science. Outside of France, the book passed largely unnoticed. This paper re-reads Canguilhem’s study of the reflex concept with respect (...) to its historiographical and epistemological implications. Canguilhem defines concepts as complex and dynamic entities combining terms, definitions, and phenomena. As a consequence, the historiography of science becomes a rather complex task. It has to take into account textual and contextual aspects that develop independently of individual authors. In addition, Canguilhem stresses the connection between conceptual activities and other functions of organic individuals in their respective environments. As a result, biological concepts become tied to a biology of conceptual thinking, analogical reasoning, and technological practice. The paper argues that this seemingly circular structure is a major feature in Canguilhem’s philosophical approach to the history of the biological sciences. (shrink)

Habermas on genealogy, metaphysics and religion Habermas’s impressive history of philosophy presents itself both as a comprehensive account of the history of Western philosophy from its beginning to the 19th century and as a genealogy of post-metaphysical thinking. In this paper I argue that this twofold goal creates a serious methodological problem. I also find Habermas’s understanding of metaphysics unclear and partly misguided. If that is correct it has consequences not only for the very notion of post-metaphysical thinking but also (...) for the understanding of the dialogue between philosophy, religion, and modern secular society that Habermas advocates. (shrink)

In What Is Philosophy?, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari distinguish the functions of philosophy, art and science. According to this distinction, the primary purpose of philosophy is to invent concepts, the purpose of art to bring forth percepts, or sensorial aggregates, and that of science to delineate functions. This article aims to show that these distinctions are not as clear-cut as they appear. Using Deleuze and Guattari’s proposition that ‘philosophy is the art of forming, inventing, and fabricating concepts’ as a (...) reference point, it suggests that the corresponding philosophical practice is intimately connected to art and science. Studying the conceptual drawings in Deleuze’s texts, the article situates his philosophy in the French tradition of epistemology (Cavaillès, Bachelard and Canguilhem). As a result, the conceptual work of this philosophy can be seen as intensively responding to the creative problems posed by the dynamics of science in contemporary societies. (shrink)

Tempest Henning ABSTRACT: This paper critically examines non-adversarial feminist argumentation model specifically within the scope of politeness norms and cultural communicative practices. Asserting women typically have a particular mode of arguing which is often seen as ‘weak’ or docile within male dominated fields, the model argues that the feminine mode of arguing is actually more...

Anniversary commemorations are ambivalent events, particularly when they celebrate philosophers. Such commemorations focus on a life's work and occasionally contribute to its elucidation. However, they frequently do violence to those they intend to honor, by emphasizing primarily those aspects of a thinker's work which make him acceptable to the spirit of the age. And such was the fate of Theodor Adorno, whose eightieth birthday was observed in 1983 at a major conference, held in Frankfurt, West Germany. There his interpreters, embarked (...) on the task of rediscovering, brought out important aspects and opened up new perspectives. But die heart of Adorno's work, the negative dialectic, encountered outright resistance. (shrink)

This paper argues that Husserl’s ethics do not fit into any one of three commonly recognized kinds of ethical theory: virtue (Aristotelian), deontological (Kantian), and consequentialist (especially, utilitarianism). Husserl’s mature ethical theory, in particular, combines a modern, Kantian or Fichtean approach based on a strong concept of a free and active ego capable of shaping its life autonomously through its own will with a more Aristotelian theory of the virtues that help us to shape our lives in order to reach (...) happiness or eudaimonia. The paper presents a historical overview of Husserl’s writings on ethics, divided into two main periods with distinct emphases. It concludes that, on the one hand, Husserl’s theory of the ethical person clarifies the origin of the virtues in the free activity of the subject, and on the other, it extends the voluntaristic conception of subjectivity to encompass the passively constituted habits. In this way, Husserl combines an Aristotelian-style virtue ethics with modern theories of subjectivity. It is this combination of modern and Aristotelian elements in Husserl’s ethics that makes it a systematically fruitful and promising contribution to ethical theory. (shrink)

In this paper, I review some of the discussions on procreative beneficence and procreative autonomy in the context of postponed motherhood and compare the considerations to the context of advanced paternal age. In doing so, I will give an overview of the main scientific findings with regard to how older age in men affects the health of future offspring. I shall demonstrate how the discrepancy between the media coverage and policies on postponed motherhood and postponed fatherhood mistakenly suggests that women (...) are more responsible than men for the health of offspring. (shrink)

La confrontación entre Heidegger y Husserl que ha dominado hasta fecha reciente la interpretación filosófica debe ser revisada a la luz de las indagaciones de Husserl sobre la protofacticidad: Ella concierne a una ontología del mundo de la vida que es afín a la mundaneidad heideggeriana: Los protohechos constituyen un horizonte de sentido ya instaurado, que el yo debe reconfigurar en su praxis. Esta protofacticidad inmodalizable alberga un núcleo de protocontingencia que da cuenta no sólo de la contingencia fáctica de (...) las categorías experienciales, sino también la del mundo, del ego y de los entes finitos: En tanto procesos o sujetos a cambios cualitativos en sus características esenciales su modo de ser se caracteriza por una permanente apertura esencial. Ambos pensadores sostienen la contingencia esencial del mundo, de la que sólo puede dar cuenta la experiencia fáctica hic et nunc de un ego encarnado y mundano.The confrontation between Heidegger and Husserl, ever present in philosophical debates, should be reviewed in the light of Hus-serl’s late inquiries into protofacticity. Concerning the ontology of the lifeworld, it addresses some of the issues of Heidegger’s characterization of Dasein as being-in-the-world: Protofacts constitute an already given sense-horizon, which the ego must re-configurate in its praxis. This unmodalizable primal facts host a core of protocontingency that accounts for the factual contingency not only of the categories of experience, but of the world, the ego and of finite beings: Understood as processes or subjected to qualitative changes in their essential structures, their mode of being is characterized by an essential openness. Both thinkers sustain the contingency of the world, for which only the hic et nunc factual experience of a mundane, incarnated ego can account. (shrink)

Erarbeitet von Dominik Balg, Anne Burkard, Henning Franzen, Aenna Frottier, David Lanius, David Löwenstein, Hanna Lucks, Kirsten Meyer, Donata Romizi, Katharina Schulz, Stefanie Thiele und Annett Wienmeister. -/- Die Entwicklung argumentativer Fähigkeiten ist ein zentrales Ziel des Ethik- und Philosophieunterrichts, ja überhaupt ein zentrales Bildungsziel. Wie aber kann das gelingen? In vielen verfügbaren Unterrichtsmaterialien werden argumentative Fähigkeiten eher vorausgesetzt als systematisch gefördert. Auch curriculare Vorgaben bleiben zumeist sehr unspezifisch. Lehrpersonen werden so weitgehend allein gelassen mit der Aufgabe, Lernende beim (...) Erwerb argumentativer Fähigkeiten zu fördern. Die vorliegende Aufgabensammlung soll dazu beitragen, diese Lücke zu schließen. Sie bietet Lehrpersonen reichhaltige Materialien für die spiralcurricular angelegte, systematische Förderung argumentativer Fähigkeit anhand exemplarischer Inhalte. Orientiert an klaren fachlichen Standards finden sich hier Aufgaben auf vier Niveaustufen, jeweils in Verbindung mit übersichtlichen Merkblättern. Die Aufgaben der beiden unteren Niveaustufen lassen sich bereits für jüngere Lernende der Sekundarstufe einsetzen, Aufgaben der obersten Niveaustufe richten sich an Lernende von Abschlussklassen oder der Studieneingangsphase. Für die Hand der Lehrpersonen werden die Aufgaben und Merkblätter durch fachliche und didaktische Kommentare sowie Lösungshinweise ergänzt. (shrink)

English summary: Human perception includes the division of space into left and right. In general, left holds a negative connotation: A clumsy man appears linkisch in German, links meaning left, and the term translates as awkward. If you conned him, he has been gelinkt. For a long time this negative coloring was also closely associated with the image of left-handers: Left-handers were often regarded as disabled, appeared awkward and antisocial, and were exposed to discrimination. To understand the people of ancient (...) Greece and Rome, one must understand the role right and left played in their perception and evaluation of the world. Henning Wirth studies the following questions from an ancient historical perspective: How did the Greeks and Romans perceive left? What role was provided to the left hand in a dominantly right-handed world, where the right hand attested Godly effectiveness? And how does one explain the phenomenon of left-handedness and assessment of left-handed people? German text. German description: Zur menschlichen Wahrnehmung gehort die Einteilung des Raumes in links und rechts. Dabei ist links in der Regel negativ konnotiert: Ein ungeschickter Mensch erscheint alinkisch. Hat man ihn betrogen, so hat man ihn agelinkt. Lange Zeit war diese Negativfarbung auch eng mit dem Bild ueber Linkshander verknuepft: Linkshander galten oftmals als behindert, erschienen asozial und ungeschickt und waren Diskriminierungen ausgesetzt. Will man den Menschen der griechischen und romischen Antike verstehen, muss man nachvollziehen, welche Rolle rechts und links in seiner Wahrnehmung und Bewertung der Welt spielten. Aus althistorischer Perspektive untersucht Henning Wirth hier folgende Fragen: Welche Vorstellungen besassen Griechen und Romer von links' Welche Rolle war in einer mehrheitlich aus Rechtshandern bestehenden Welt, in der der rechten Hand gottliche Wirkkraft attestiert wurde, fuer die linke Hand vorgesehen' Und wie erklarte man sich das Phanomen der Linkshandigkeit und bewertete linkshandige Menschen'. (shrink)